


Manistique

by all_these_ghosts



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, On the Run
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 10:20:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8201749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_these_ghosts/pseuds/all_these_ghosts
Summary: She thinks this must be what sunlight tastes like: the bright and the tang and the sweetness.





	

**Author's Note:**

> from the [@txf-fic-chicks](https://tmblr.co/mBRotgTo_2tOREacqfxRXQg) birthday prompt: red, london, cake
> 
> I never posted this here! mostly because it didn't have a title! so now it's called Manistique, which is the town in the UP where this is probably set. it's beautiful there, and I read somewhere once that the town/river's name is a corruption of the French word for [monism](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/monism). I have no idea if that's true, but it's extremely appealing.

**September 2002**

Fall comes early here. The breeze off the lake is crisp and the mornings smell like woodsmoke. On the news they say it’s ninety-two degrees in D.C., and from a thousand miles away Scully can feel her hair frizz in sympathy.

She leaves Mulder sleeping to the sound of the early morning news and wanders down Cedar Street. They’ve only been here for two days, but already Scully knows this town better than she ever knew the District. Surely they’ve been here before, she thinks. It looks just like all the others. The sun won’t rise for at least half an hour, and the town is deserted.

A bell rings when she walks into the bakery. It looks just the way Scully expected: clean white walls and glass display cases and a pleasant-faced teenage girl - Brittany G., according to her nametag - behind the counter. Brittany smiles a greeting and Scully reminds herself to smile back. Sometimes she misses her badge and the way it excused her from social niceties. Nobody expects the FBI agent to smile.

“Just one slice?” Brittany asks, and when Scully nods she adds, “Is this your breakfast?”

“I guess so,” Scully says.

The girl leans over the counter and whispers, conspiratorially, “I eat this pie for breakfast every day. You know, they say cranberries are good for your brain. Makes your memory better.”

“Is that right?” Scully asks, playing along. She pays the girl, sticking an extra dollar in the tip jar.

Back at the Harbor Motel, Scully settles in to a white patio chair just outside their room. The pie looks like a photo in a cookbook: golden crust with sugar sparkling on top, the bright red filling smooth and thick.

The first bite is always so good. She closes her eyes, savoring it, the way the sugary topping crunches between her teeth. She thinks this must be what sunlight tastes like: the bright and the tang and the sweetness.

The second bite is even better.

The door opens and Mulder steps out, blinking in the morning twilight. “Scully?”

Through a mouthful of pie, she says, “Mmm.”

“What are you doing?”

She swallows. “Eating pie.” She’d hoped he would sleep in later than this. She’d hoped that she wouldn’t have to explain herself.

He rubs his eyes. “It’s six-thirty in the morning, Scully.”

“The bakery opened at five.”

“Yeah, that’s not the weird part.”

She sighs and sets the pie container down on her lap. “It’s Melissa’s birthday.”

“Oh.” He sits down in the other chair, heavily. The cheap plastic creaks. “So the pie…?”

“We always had pie on her birthday.”

“She didn’t like cake?” This is clearly incomprehensible to Mulder, who has no difficulty inhaling an entire cake in one sitting. She’s watched him do it.

“Melissa had to do everything her own way,” Scully explains. “ _Normal_ kids had birthday cake, but she wasn’t normal, so she wanted pie. It used to make my father crazy. But every year Mom baked a pie for Missy’s birthday. She put candles on it and everything.” 

Scully passes him the container. The look of pleasure on his face when he tastes the pie makes her shiver.

She continues, “When Melissa was twenty she lived in London for a while, waitressing and palm reading. My mother called a bakery there and had them deliver a pie to Missy's apartment on her birthday.”

A month after that Scully got a postcard from her sister. It had a picture of Amsterdam on the front and a long missive in tiny letters on the back. Almost all of it was about a boy she’d met, but tacked on at the very end was a note: _P.S. tell mom thanks for the pie_. When Maggie saw the note, she cried.

Mulder watches her with interest. “So you do this every year?”

“Every year. She would have been forty today,” Scully says. She’s surprised by how steady her voice sounds. Normally thinking about Melissa upsets her, but now that she’s lost everything else too, no individual wound cuts so deep.

It’s almost a blessing.

They pass the pie back and forth, and she’s surprised at how glad she is to share it. Past the parking lot she can see the lake, smooth as a mirror in the calm morning. Fog hovers over the surface.

Mulder hands her the last little bit of pie. Every year she eats the whole slice, even though she regrets it by the end - but half? Half is perfect. Her last bite is as good as the first.

Scully says, “When she blew out the candles, she didn’t make a wish. She said wishes were for stars. Instead she closed her eyes and gave up a secret. She said that it was the only way to get rid of them.” She laughs, but it isn’t a happy sound. “I hated it when we were kids. I wanted so badly to know the secrets she was giving up. She knew all of mine.”

He just looks at her.

“So that’s what I do,” she says, closing the empty container, placing the plastic fork inside. “I have a slice of birthday pie, and I tell her a secret.”

His voice is quiet. “What did you tell her this year, Scully?”

Her chair scrapes along the concrete as she pulls it closer to his. The sun is coming up, and she slides her cold hand into his warm one.

Silently, Scully gives up a secret to Melissa, wherever she is, and makes a wish on the setting stars. When she kisses him it tastes like cranberry pie, sweet and bright, and it is a secret and a wish and a promise.


End file.
